Category Archives: General Religion and Spirituality

One of my responsibilities in our stake is to work with the young single adults, our YSA branch presidency, and the Institute Teacher. One of our biggest challenges is in getting the YSA to attend institute.

When you are a youth in the Church, it is generally expected that you will attend seminary. Not everyone goes, but there is definitely that expectation. If you are from an active family and plan on serving a mission (male or female), you are almost definitely going to attend seminary. However, in our area, Institute is just not a big thing. We want it to be, but when there isn’t that “critical mass” of YSA in one area, there just isn’t that momentum.

As an 18-year-old freshman at Utah State University, Bradon Capener registered for classes at the Logan Institute of Religion for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but he admits he didn’t see the value and rarely attended.

It wasn’t until Capener returned from serving a Mormon mission a few years later and “decided to get involved” that he realized what he had been missing.

The family is gathered together and we are set to get started. Since my oldest is now 12, he is going to watch all of the sessions with us. The younger two will watch half an hour of each session, all of Sunday morning, and then President Monson’s conclusion on Sunday afternoon.

A few years ago word clouds, or “wordles” were all the rage. This is a way to show the content of an article. The most commonly used words are bigger, and the least used words are smaller. At a quick glance you can get an idea of the main topic of an article.

I commented in my summaries that one of my favourite talks was “The Choice Generation” by Brother Randall L Ridd. He spoke about the Internet and the choices that young people have to make. Here is the wordle from his talk:

Well, it’s over. It was quite good. I think my overall favourite session this time was the Priesthood Session. Each session had a talk I enjoyed, but that had more that I enjoyed in just the one session.

I can’t believe that conference is almost over. We’re just about to start the last session. In between these two Sunday sessions we watched Angels in the Outfield. It probably isn’t the typical movie that we would watch on a Sunday, but my wife and I both have fond memories of it from when we were dating, and hey, it has an “angel” in it, so it can’t be that bad. All of my kids said it was awesome 🙂

As the session is about to start, I see that President Packer is there for the first time. I presume we will hear him speak. We also need to \hear from Elder Christofferson and Elder Perry.

I think that conference Sunday are my two favourite Sundays in the year. I haven’t lived in an area where I go to Church in the afternoon, so for us to have the morning available is a real treat. We got up this morning, had toaster waffles, watched The Pirate Fairy (the latest Tinkerbell movie… it was excellent!) and then went for a walk. We’re all getting settled now to watch the session.

I’m sitting in our den with my father getting ready to watch the conference. We’ve got pizza, wings, chips, and pitas ready to go. I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to type with chicken wing sauce all over my fingers! 🙂

Our former stake president who became an Area Seventy last year is moving out of the area. He wasn’t released, so I guess he’ll be an area authority where he is moving to. I didn’t recognize any of the new names sustained, so I guess I don’t know (of) the Area Seventy who will replace him

It’s a cold, rainy day where I live, so it’s a great day to be inside. Here we go… the first session out of five (six if you could the women’s meeting last weekend). I’m sitting at work with two laptops in front of me. One is the full-screen video of the session, and the other is where I’m typing this. I’ll probably also follow some of the #ldsconf hashtag on Twitter.

I remember reciting the Lord’s Prayer in elementary school (before it was decided that you couldn’t do that anymore). As a young kid, I didn’t think at all about what the words meant. I rarely come across the Lord’s prayer now as an adult. Since I’ve been a Mormon my entire life, I don’t really see how reciting it is helpful to people. The comparison is made to some of our ordinances having set wording, but the difference is just that… that it is an ordinance prayer, not just a “regular” prayer.

To me it is just like a lot of things with religion. If you feel the Spirit and feel closer to God, then go for it. If it doesn’t help you, then try something else.